ForgeRock Tames NetSuite Data Reporting With Angles

In Brief

• Before Angles, ForgeRock had no success with complex native reporting tools
• Angles was the clear choice, an intuitive, cloud-based offering loaded with pre-built content
• Implementation was quick and easy, and Bennett’s team was generating reports in days
• Angles shaved 2 days off ForgeRock’s month-end close process
• Bennett’s team saved hundreds of hours on SOX compliance tasks

ForgeRock, Inc., is a multinational identity and access management (IAM) software company focusing on the customer and workforce experience. The company is public, and headquartered in San Francisco, California, with offices around the world.

In today’s digital ecosystem, everyone and everything has a digital identity which allows systems, services, and apps to know who they are interacting with. ForgeRock is a dynamic, comprehensive digital identity platform designed to provide no compromise security, privacy, and compliance, and to support exceptional experiences.

Using ForgeRock, more than a thousand enterprise customers orchestrate, manage, and secure the complete lifecycle of identities, in either their customers or workforce, or both.

Native Reporting Tools Weren’t Cutting It

Before implementing Angles for NetSuite this year, ForgeRock faced slow, complex reporting processes that weighed down its finance and transactional teams. The problems chiefly involved revenue and financial reporting. At fault was the practice of downloading multiple reports then manually recompiling them in Excel. Michael Bennett, Accounting Projects & Systems Director at ForgeRock, needed a system to streamline reporting and boost his team’s productivity.

NetSuite has a broad set of native reporting tools, which Bennet’s team tried to use. But they quickly found that without technical knowledge they could not autonomously generate anything more complex than base-level reports. Attempting to create tax, treasury, and revenue reports were dragging down productivity.

“So, with our revenue reporting with NetSuite, what we had to do was download multiple reports, maybe four or five reports, and then recompile those into an Excel database, which is obviously very manual and time-consuming…it ultimately did not meet our needs,” he said of NetSuite. “A barrier to entry with native NetSuite reporting tools was the steep early learning curve to build reports.”

On top of that, ForgeRock was a newly public company, so the team were also wrangling with new SOX compliance processes.

Bennett and his team were ready to trade in these complexities for ease of use. Some solutions he researched promised a year of preparation and building, as well as a heavy lean on IT to get them up and running. He needed something that would let his team hit the ground running.

Angles Stood Out From the Crowd

Creating reports at ForgeRock was time-consuming and tedious and Bennett saw much room for improvement in those processes. At the time they used Anaplan for reporting and budgeting on NetSuite ERP data. They had other solutions for SOX controls and expense claims. This multi-system approach worked but was not ideal.

He wanted a tool to accompany his ERP that was:

• Cloud-based
• Easy to implement
• Loaded with pre-built content to hit the ground running
• Simple to use to get users engaged from the get-go

He had used GL Wands successfully at a previous company and trusted that insightsoftware would deliver again. Bennett hoped that, due to its ease of use, Angles for NetSuite could solve his revenue reporting issues. The fact that it was cloud-based was another huge plus. They wanted a solution to deliver better financial reporting as well as tie together what was working for them with NetSuite.

“My experience across multiple industries is you have an ERP that is transacting and then you need a reporting tool that sits on top of that to give you access to real-time data, data at the lowest level. What we were looking for in a new solution was, number one, for it to be cloud-based, and number two, ease of use.”

Angles for NetSuite was all that and more to Bennett.

Seamless Implementation

When Angles for NetSuite came to the market, Bennett brought it in to fix ForgeRock’s reporting woes. 

“With Angles, it was a very fluid and interactive experience to get it all up and running,” said Bennet. “We had certain ideas and certain needs that were taken on board by the product team, and they built reports specifically for us, which are now embedded in the product offering for general release.” 

While longer-term employees have been slower to adopt Angles, ForgeRock has seen great uptake from eager new employees. He says the laggards are gradually joining the ranks of his new Angles users. The ease of implementation, preloaded reports, and out-of-the-box readiness is proving too good to resist. 

“They [new employees] get it, so we’re getting new licenses, more and more new licenses for Angles…It’s difficult to force people to use something new, so I think it’s easier for them to see their colleagues using it, saving time, working smarter.” 

Results Came Thick and Fast

As companies strive to stay nimble in modern markets, supply chains, and industries, streamlining processes and spending are must-haves. Angles for NetSuite delivered many key wins for ForgeRock, including:

Out-of-the-box Readiness

Bennett found that Angles was ready to go with a comprehensive library of extensible, interactive business views. His team loved the pre-built content packs, including interactive reports, visualizations, and dashboards. They were up and running immediately, with no lag for installation, combining ERP data with other sources to view the bigger picture.

“We evaluated Tableau…and it was going to take up to a year wait to work with IT to build new reports in Tableau. Whereas we’ve already hit the ground running with Angles. The beauty of Angles, is it comes preloaded with predefined reports for us, based on our needs.”

Visibility of Up-to-date Data

As ForgeRock developed its place in the software market, its financial reporting needs increased. While NetSuite managed well enough, Bennett wanted more insight into how the company was doing and its relationship with vendors.

Angles for NetSuite provides ForgeRock the fine-tuned reporting it needs. It ensures Bennett has a reporting tool that provides access to real-time data. In addition to generating proper tax, treasury, and revenue reports, Angles supplies the intercompany matrix in a summary format that his team needed but was not receiving with NetSuite.

“We now have a vendor trend report, which is pretty powerful,” said Bennett. “And then we have our treasury reports, which are also powerful. But the most important one for us is the revenue reports all being available in one place…. for me personally each month I look at the vendor trend which very quickly and easily shows me the activity for the previous month or another data date range if needed.”

Ease of Use

ForgeRock teams don’t rely on IT to build reports anymore. With Angles they can self serve their own financial reports, saving valuable time and allowing them to zero in on the data they need to share and analyze. Angles allows them to present operational data in a way anyone can understand. With drag-and-drop editing, rich visualizations and intuitive interactivity, ForgeRock staff can refresh their reports at any time to get fast answers to their business-critical questions.

“The fact that it comes preloaded with reports out the door, it’s a fantastic option. It is similar in look and feel to Tableau, but it is much easier to set up,” Bennett said.

Automated Reporting Processes

The ForgeRock finance team are spending less time on reports and using that time for more valuable tasks that drive revenue. They love the ability to drill down into the details of any report, from summary to transaction level, to find and fix issues quickly. Angles puts them in control of operational reporting because it understands their ERP and connects directly to source data. Now Bennett’s team spends more time analyzing data rather than just compiling it, supplying up-to-date information for informed decisions. Angles shaved two days off ForgeRock’s month-end close process and that benefit has not escaped Bennett.

“It has saved a lot of time and manual effort. It allows the teams to really focus on the value adds,” said Bennett. “All those hours that we spent manually recompiling data have now been saved.”

SOX Compliance

As a public company, Angles for NetSuite drives ForgeRock’s SOX compliance. Many in the company were new to the process, but Angles has delivered a readily usable and scalable method of analyzing and achieving goals within SOX tasks. Since Angles shaves a few hours off each task, it easily saves hundreds of team hours every month.

“As a newly public company, Angles has helped tremendously with our SOX compliance effort. For most people in the company, it is our first time dealing with SOX. We have hundreds of SOX processes and controls, and we are utilizing Angles extensively to close out those tasks each month,” said Bennett. “Without Angles it would take a few extra hours for each task because you’ve got to go through different screens in NetSuite find, let’s say, a PO (purchase order) and you have a match the invoice and the bill. Whereas by using certain angles reports, you can see everything in one screen.”

Real-time insights help ForgeRock navigate the future

With Angles for NetSuite, ForgeRock now has complete control over its data. Reduced manual data processes mean Bennett’s team is happier and more productive. He expects his use of Angles will expand over time and he hopes more users will adopt it as they see others prospering from the value it provides.